Month: September 2015

At least twice a year one or other of the newspapers prints a story about one of those mysterious apparitions in which the likeness of Jesus is burnt on to a piece of toast, or can be seen (if you squint) in the seeds of a watermelon. In 1828 the London Medical Gazette reported a strange Napoleonic equivalent – thirteen … Read more

This blog usually deals with medical matters; but I couldn’t resist reproducing this article from the first number of the American Medical and Philosophical Register, published in 1814, even though it was contributed to the non-medical section of the journal. An engineer called James Sharples – holder of a patent relating to steam engines – contributed an essay about … Read more

The Annals of Medicine for 1799 contains a letter from a Dr Guthrie, an Scottish physician then working in St Petersburg. At the invitation of the journal’s editor, he related a series of interesting cases he had encountered in his practice there. One of them came from a former housemaid, who had visited his study to tell of a simple … Read more

A cautionary tale from the Medical Facts and Observations, published in 1795:

On Tuesday, the 25th of March last, a French gentleman was sent to me by an Apothecary in this neighbourhood, complaining of a pungent, hot, and irritating sensation in the rectum ; which was considerably augmented during every evacuation per anum. These painful symptoms had commenced on … Read more

In 1823 The Lancet’s regular summary of goings-on at the London hospitals contained this interesting report of an early public demonstration of the stomach pump. The experiment documented here took place at Guy’s Hospital:

Friday, Nov. 21. At half past one o’clock the operating theatre was crowded to excess, in consequence of its having been stated on the preceding … Read more

A curious book of remedies was published in London in 1700, entitled Dr. Lower’s, and several other Eminent Physicians, Receipts, Containing the Best and Safest Method for Curing Most Disease in Human Bodies. It was aimed at those without easy access to medical services – a compilation of home remedies which could be prepared by those without any pharmacological expertise. … Read more

It used to be thought dangerous to give a hot horse cold water; when I first heard this canard as a schoolboy I remember my informant telling me gravely that cold water kills horses instantly. Not having much to do with horses, it has taken me thirty years to discover that few, if any, equine deaths are attributed to … Read more

This dramatic headline from an early edition of The Lancet caught my eye:

It’s a great illustration of the changing nature of surgical risk. If today a patient died after having a nose job, it would probably be on the front page of the newspapers; death is not an expected complication of a nose reconstruction. But 1827 was a very … Read more

In August 1868 the British Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual meeting in Norwich. One of the members invited to present a paper was Lydia Becker, an amateur astronomer and botanist; among her accomplishments she could count a gold medal from the Royal Horticultural Society and the respect of Charles Darwin, with whom she corresponded.… Read more

In 1868 the Corporation of London published a slim volume entitled Memorials of London and London Life in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries. It contained extracts from the archives of the City of London. An editor at The Lancet read it, and found an anecdote which remained topical, half a millennium later: